


legacy

by arabellagaleotti



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Civil War (Marvel), Domestic Avengers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Howard Stark's Bad Parenting, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Italian Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Kid Tony Stark, Loneliness, MIT Era, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Origin Story, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Iron Man 3, Pre-Iron Man 1, Pro-Sokovia Accords, Sokovia Accords, Tony Angst, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, big yeet amiright folks, legacy is a full mood in this, sorta - Freeform, welllllll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 09:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20890163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabellagaleotti/pseuds/arabellagaleotti
Summary: legacynoun [ C ]something that is a part of your history or that remains from an earlier time:eg. the greeks have a rich legacy of literature.eg. the war has left a legacy of hatredOR,Tony learns the meaning of legacy very young.





	1. Chapter 1

legacy

** _noun_ ** [ C ]

something that is a part of your history or that remains from an earlier time:

  1. _ the greeks have a_ _rich__ legacy _**_of_**_ literature._
  2. _the_ _war__ has_ _left__ a legacy _**_of_**_ hatred_

\--

Tony learns the meaning of legacy very young.

It means money. It means power -- most importantly. It means that your name will not be washed away with the tide of open-mouthed, unmemorable, stupid humans. It means you will be passed down through highschool history class and wikipedia.

For the rich, the famous, legacy is the golden goose, the prize at the end of the rainbow.

The day he gets his first lesson, he is four years old, and it has been announced the world that he’s a genius.

Father had been happy that he was smart. It had cemented when he was waiting for. His legacy to arrive: mail order.

They were in his office. Tony hated and loved that room both. The furniture was so life-like, it jumped out at him, the bookcase three times his size, the desk that he can’t see over, the liquor cabinet, the clock, the carpet, it’s all just eating him, swallowing him, until he’s drowning in the picture-frame that laughs at him, a slew of paperweights, a heavy tome of The Bible.

His father looks undone. His suit jacket is over his chair, his eye is loose around his neck, his collar is unbuttoned, he is leaning on the corner of his desk, holding a crystal-cut glass.

“Legacy,” he booms, loud and clear. Tony remembers that one day, he and his mother had taken a trip out out Massachusetts, where his father was doing a series of lectures at MIT. He was maybe 3, and nearly all he remembers is holding his mothers hand and looking down at rows and rows of students leaning forward eagerly to hear his father speak. His father had been animated, gesturing, mouth open. He had been loud and powerful and bright.

“Legacy. It’s a big word. 3 syllables. 6 letters,” he gets up, paces a few feet, raking a hand through his hair; it falls around his face messily. “It’s not big in length, but in substance. We are all legacy, a legacy of the human footnote in history, of our meger intelligence. You --” he points at Tony, index finger straight and quivering, like an arrow, “-- will be _ great _ . For the _ legacy _.” He gasps, panting. Tony stares up at him, blinks once.

\--

He understands a bit more, from that day on.

All he is, all his mother is, is a means to an end. If he is good enough, Howard’s name will be carried as his, people will remember the name Stark a hundred years from here.

If he is good enough.

\--

Tony is fourteen years old and he hasn't seen his father for years and a half. He’s fourteen and lives on the other end of the country.

He doesn't suppose that’s normal. 

He looks around his cookie-cutter room from the window seat he’s sitting at, then down at the dark campus of his boarding school, and sighs. Takes another drag of his cigarette. He’s not supposed to have these. He’d paid an older boy to get them for him. Another thing he’s not supposed to do.

The phone he’s not really supposed to have rings on the desk behind him. It’s an old, pale-pink rotary phone rather than the mobiles everyone is using now. Tony likes this one, it reminds him of his mother on the other side, cooing words at him in that soft way of hers.

He switches his cigarette over to the other hand and reaches over his shoulder to grab it.

“‘Yello,” he drawls, bringing the cigarette back to his mouth.

“Hello, Anthony.” Only his father calls him Anthony.

“It’s Tony, _ dad _,” he spits out, and crushes the cigarette out on the windowpane. “And how did you get my number?”

“I’ve pulled a few strings for you, _ Tony,” _he grits out. It feel forced. “I know you’re...unhappy at that school, so I’ve got you a spot at MIT this coming fall. You’d be the youngest ever entrant.”

Tony thinks, for a moment. For him, a moment is all you could ever need. He sits up, swung his legs over the seat. “Yeah. Why not.”

His father hangs up.

\--

His new roommate is nice. James Rhodes. Some 19-year-old kid who is kinda grumpy about having a kid saddled on him his second year of college, but smart enough to realise that said kid is gonna be a very powerful person in the future.

Still, they fall into an easy sort of rapport before long, Tony making him extra ramen and Rhodey leaving a sticky note on his overdue library books. They don’t like each other, but they tolerate each other.

He’s four, five, six months in and realises that he doesn't have any friends. He does not have a single friend in MIT’s big, lonely campus.

He’s in a mechanical engineering class when he looks around, sees one face, maybe two that he knows — and that's only because of group projects — and thinks, wholly, with his true self, _ fuck it. _

He grabs his bag, packs up, even as people turn around at the noise, and leaves. Just like that.

Well not quite. It's still a three-hour train ride and he’s got nowhere to go once he’s in New York. After sitting on the bench for ten minutes, he gets up to the nearest pay phone and punches in a number.

“Hiya, _Tiberius_ _Stone_ speaking,” He drawls across the line. Tony's surprised he's using his full name, he usually insists on Ty, like him he hates his full name.

“Ty? It’s Tony. I’m in New York.”

Ty laughs. “Ha-ha! Oh, Tones. This is — this is gonna be fun.”

“Could you pick me up? I’m at the train station.”

Ty laughs again, maybe at the thought of taking the train. “I’ll be there in 15.”

Ty picks him up in the most elaborate, expensive, impractical sports car Tony has ever seen.

He rolls down the window, music pounding and grins, wearing sunglasses that he absolutely doesn't need at all, since it’s A: night. B: they’re literally unfeasibly small.

“Get in,” he shouts. Tony hitches his bag higher over his shoulder and slides into shotgun.

\--

Ty has changed a lot since boarding school. He’s no longer slightly geeky, if Tony asked him about the comics he used to like, he’d laugh and sidestep the question. His glasses are gone, he has a tattoo on his collarbone, a little sun. 

There’s a lot but the main difference is that he’s rich now. He blows half a mil each night, and that's on the weekdays.

He gets sucked into the whirlwind of Ty’s life, the absolute recklessness of it all.

Nights out every night, the VIP areas of clubs, private jets, cars and penthouse apartments.

He doesn't have any clothes so he has to borrow Ty’s, shirts that cost as much as rent in Manhattan, coats from next year’s fashion week, pants with designer belts, luminous white shoes that get scuffed twenty seconds onto the pavement.

People look at him differently when he’s wearing these things. Before they looked at him like he was the scrawny white boy with too big a tongue, now they look at him with respect, they get out of his way, girls talk to him, people are nice. It doesn't take him long to realise the difference is money. He has money when he wears these things, an outward show of it. When he’s not he could be the kid from down the block.

\--

Rain is falling in sheets when Tony hears his name. He’s fresh out of the club, Ty’s climbing into a cab, yelling at him to hurry up.

“Tony!” It’s Rhodey, holding his jacket over his head.

“What are you doing?” Tony hollers back, shaking off the Ty’s hand trying to pull him into the cab.

“I’m —” Rhodey falters. “I...don’t know. I’m getting you.” Oh, okay. So someone’s pissed off that he’s getting photographed every night and on the front page every morning. 

“Did Howard call?” Tony asks flippantly, uninterested now.

“No — no, he didn't. I — I was worried.”

“Why?” Tony asks, like he’s really, honestly surprised.

“Because you’re my room-mate, Tony. I’m meant to take care of you.”

“I don’t need you. I spent half the year without you. I don't need you.”

He turns around, chases Ty’s annoyed face back into the cab.

“Hey! Tony! Hey!” Rhodey catches his oversized blazer and follows him into the backseat.

“Oi!” Tony seethes, trying to get over his outrage.

The taxi pulls away from the curb.

“Who are you?” Tiberius Stone blinks at him.

“James Rhodes, hi,” Rhodey smiles. 

“...hi.” he says, looking bored with this already. Anything that’s not related to cocaine, money, women, parties, or outrageousness bores him. 

“Hey, hey! Cabbie!” Tony says to the driver, “pull over, please.”

“No, no,” Rhodey leans forwards, interrupting. “Go to Penn Station.”

“Would you just..._ stop?!” _Tony sighs, leaning back.

“No! I’m taking you back to MIT.”

“I can take care of myself!” He fires back bossily.

“You’re 15!” Rhodey says, outraged at the mere suggestion.

“You're 20. what's the difference?”

“Yo,” Ty leans forward, cigarette wobbling in his mouth as he speaks, “can you drop me off at The Roxy, after?”

The cabbie nods, flicking on his blinker.

“I can drive, I can get a tattoo or buy cigarettes or vote or enlist in the army!” Rhodey argues.

“So can I!”

“Not _ legally _!”

“What does that matter when you’re rich!” Ty laughs at that, lighting a cigarette.

“Money is not a -- a_ legal out!” _ Rhodey stammers, gesturing wildly. 

“Then how come his father hasn’t been arrested!” Tony points a finger at Ty, who looks carefully innocent at the admission, shrugging under his doe eyes.

They come to a stop in front of Penn Station.

“No, nuh-uh! Keep going! Keep driving, cab-man!” Tony says, right before Rhodey shoves him out of the car and onto the ground. Rhodey steps out, leaving Ty for the bill.

“Oi!” Tony jumps up, sopping wet, hopping mad. “Hey! I’m not going back!”

“Too bad! Because I’m taking you home!”

“It’s not my home!”

Tony reaches up and slaps him across the face. There’s a stunned, confused moment before Rhodey just picks him up and throws him across his shoulder like a sack of small, angry potatoes.

Later that night, or morning, more accurately, after a harrowing train ride and three separate taxi drivers, they end up at the dorm. Rhodey throws a still-damp Tony onto his bed and climbs into his own.

After a few minutes of huffing, swearing and three attempted escapes, they both calm down.

“Rhodey?” Tony says in the dark, voice quiet. If he did not know who he was, Tony would seem a child to him. A scared, lonely child.

“Yeah,” Rhodey whispers back, opening his eyes, even though he can't see.

“I’m sorry. For...y’know.”

“Hitting me?”

“Hitting you.”

Silence takes the crown for a brief moment.

“Tony?”

“Yeah?” he can hear Tony's laugh.

“I’m sorry. For not being there for you.”

“That’s okay. I hit you.”

“Night, Tones.”

“Goodnight.”

—


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of college is actually fun. Once Rhodey gets over the fact that there's no stopping him, that is.

It's a whirlwind of late night ramen and takeaway food, all-night study for finals, pranking the Yale-Harvard football match (absolutely hilarious, by the way), him helping build DUM-E, most breaks in Carolina with Mama Rhodes, Spring Breaks usually in Cancun….

….It's the most fun he's ever had.

Then it has to end.

Graduating is meant to be a happy experience. For him, though, it just means he can’t put it off any longer. Rhodey is going, joining the army even though Tony tells him that he doesn't have to do that, he can get him a job anywhere. He himself is also going. Well,  _ going  _ to have to start making weapons.

Obie's been on him for years. It's about time.

—

He’s 17 years old and his parents are dead.

Obie had called him. It was late, about 1am. That afternoon, he had driven up from Long Island to the city in his father's most expensive sports car, stopped by Ty’s hotel room, stayed there for near-on 4 hours.

That's when Obie called.

“Yo, yo, hi -- hi Obie,” he says over the music, holding up two fingers to Ty before stepping outside the hotel room. “What's up?” he says as soon as he’s outside.

“Tony,” Obie’s voice is rough. “There’s something -- something I have to tell you.”

“Shoot it,” Tony replies. Nervous, now Obie never sound like that.

He sighs on the other end of the line. “This is really -- it should be done in person.”

“No,” Tony refused. “Tell me now.”

“Tony, I --”

“Obie," he says sharply, cutting him off, “tell me.”

“Your parents died a few hours ago.”

Separately, Tony understand those words,  _ parents, hours, ago, few, your. _ Even some of them together,  _ a few hours ago, your parents.  _ But death?  _ Died?  _ he has no thought process for  _ died. _

His world goes fuzzy, his hands shake and he drops the phone. It clatters onto the ground, he follows it soon after, slumping down to sit with his back against the wall, Obie is telling him something over the bright pressure in the chest. He lifts the phone to his ear, “It’s alright, son. It’s all gonna be alright,” Obie says. Tony cannot decide whether to believe him or not. 

It only takes a moment for him to decide. Only ever a moment. 

He decides  _ no.  _

\--

Cold, slender hands wrap around his head, silky-smooth hair trails over his forehead. He doesn't open his eyes, but he knows it’s her.

“Mi bambino.” _ My baby.  _ She tutts, reproachful like she always is after he gets in trouble. 

“Mama,” he whispers. “You’re dead.” She hums, low, sits on the bed next to him. She felt the bed dip.

“Si. Si, apparentemente.”  _ Yes, yes, apparently. _

“Not apparently,  _ you are.  _ Obie told me.” She sighs, and a gust of her sweeps over him, like he is a lonely sailboat on the ocean. It's fills his sails, and he shoots forward, skating across the blue sea.

“Obadiah è un uomo cattivo, piccola.”  _ Obadiah is a bad man, baby. _

“Obie is my godfather.” He denies, not daring to properly argue with her.

“Non ho visto allora. Vedo tutto ora.” _ I did not see it then. I see all now. _

He finally opens his eyes to ask her what she means, but she is gone. Her bedroom remains, clean like they left it.

That's funny. When did he get to Long Island?

\--

One unexpected upside of being the sole heir of a multi-million dollar company is the money. Tony has near-unfettered access to his accounts now, being of age and with no one to make the authority to cut him off. Well, Obie does, but Obie would  _ never  _ do that.

He buys so many things that he doesn't need, cars, art, yachts, jewellery, suits, clothes, houses, furniture. He jumps around the world, a week in Japan, two in Greece, three months in Prague, of all places.

He settles down after a while, comes home. He still alternates between California and New York, New York his ancestral home, California, the base of SI and full of surfer chicks.

Sometimes he thinks he must be the loneliest popular guy in the world, because after the after-after party he goes to whatever glass home he’s occupying for the minute and just works, or sleeps or thinks, in the dark.

\--

“It’s all money,” he says to the empty room, like it is a lecturers hall. “It is all money. Not good, not intelligence. It is greed. It is not who you are in the world, but who you  _ know  _ . That is what matters.”

It’s always money.

“Tony?” Rhodey opens the door, falling with it.

“Yeah?” Tony drop his hands, abruptly, his golden vision fading.

“Everyone’s…— whatcha doing?”

“Nothing,” he reassures, “everyone’s what?”

“Out on the deck. Ty’s — Ty’s drowning, I think.”

“For real?” Tony asked, picking up his drink from the side-table.

Rhodey just shrugs. He's just as uncaring as everyone else.

—

New York just  _ gets him,  _ Tony thinks one day, wrapped up in his sweater, sitting on his hotel-room balcony. The cold wind cuts through him, but he doesn't even shiver. Slowly, cupping a hand to make sure the gusts of wind doesn’t put out his cigarette, he brings it to his mouth, inhaling deeply. The burn in his lungs reminds him he’s here, he’s real, not made of shadows and reputation.

California is nice, sure. He likes the heat, and the girls, and the new age that's developing there. But he likes his this city more, the one that's too busy to notice him, that holds so many different types of people — from Brooklyn to Wall Street — this place holds him as well. 

It holds all the different parts of him, the smart part — in the universities, that intelligent people that litter this city like gold flakes in a riverbank. The rich part — restaurants where he has dinner with Ty, where they knock back $400 dollar wine like air. The rebellious part — the bodega down the street that’ll sell him cigs if he pays enough, the clubs where the music is loud enough not to think. The famous part — the paparazzi that line what seems like every corner. 

The people here are... kinder than California, too. In California, they are all slick, greasy, too big, too fake; everyone is looking for something. In New York, they’re mostly the same of course, but there’s an honesty here that Cali lacks. Here, people don’t care, they don’t look at you in the street. They just push past and walk on by. 

\--

“What motivates you, Mr. Stark?” Cassie Everdeen or something like that is asking — she’s a reporter, he’s bored, you get the idea.

Legacy, legacy, golden, shining, fucking overrated  _ legacy  _ .

He doesn't say that, of course, but he does smile and give some recycled answer that will look pretty in her article, then swings himself into the car where Happy will turn on his music and drive by his favorite burger place and he will be allowed to be alone for a few minutes. 

—


	3. Chapter 3

He lives his life outrageously, as expected. He is an eccentric, he is so smart he’s driven himself mad, he’s a bachelor, he can’t love, he’s richer than Scrooge McDuck.

He’s a living contradiction. Because he goes home and he...he sits. He doesn't drink, or invite a girl over, or spend his money or anything. He just sits. In the dark. In the moonlight. On the couch. On the bar. In his bed. Anywhere. It’s evolved from after his parents died, but now he doesn't even do anything. He just sits, and some part of him mourns the other part of him that wanted to improve the world.

He sits there and closes his eyes and just is. He detoxes, spills out all of the strain from the day, all of the fakeness. And then he opens his eyes and do it all again.

\--

Then he’s in the desert, doing some military think he can't even really be bothered with but has to. Anyway, Rhodey’s here, that’s good, he hasn’t seen him in a while. 

He climbs into the fun-vee with his scotch and makes a couple jokes but soon he’s done making jokes. He’s done with everything but the blood spilling from his mouth and the stabbing in his chest.

_ My bomb  _ is all he can think.  _ My bomb my bomb my bomb. _

\--

He wakes up, and he’s choking, there’s hard plastic in his trachea, there’s a hard, hot aching pressure on his chest.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you.”

\--

“We met once, you know, at a technical conference in Bern,” he tells him, later.

**“** I don't remember,” Tony says. He realises that he does not remember a lot.

“No, you wouldn't. If I had been that drunk, I wouldn't have been able to stand, much less give a lecture on integrated circuits.”

Tony laughs, a little. “Yeah, well. Sorry.”

—

"Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America."

Is this what his father imagined?

—

“He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile,” Yinsen translates, wincing in the hot sun, “He wants you to make the list of materials. He says for you to start working immediately, and when you're done, he will set you free.”

**“** No, he won't.”

“No, he won't,” Yinsen agrees, smiling as much as he can.

\--

“I'm sure they're looking for you, Stark. But they will never find you in these mountains. Look, what you just saw, that is your legacy, Stark.”  _ Legacy.  _ That dam word comes to haunt him again. He’s reminded of his father, of that night.  _ You will be great. _ His life’s work is his legacy, it’s his father’s too, in a way. “Your life's work, in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?” He  _ will _ be great. Not just by being a genius, but by acting. But by surviving. His last act of defiance is not going to be this. It’s gonna be spitting on his father’s grave.

**\--**

**“** Why should I do anything? They're going to kill me, you, either way. And if they don't, I'll probably be dead in a week.” 

“Well, then,” Yinsen says, the most serious Tony has ever seen him, even when talking about shrapnel in his atrial septum, “this is a very important week for you, isn't it?

—

“What do I call you?” Tony asks, far too late.

“My name is Yinsen.”

“Yinsen,” Tony smiles, “Nice to meet you.”

—

**“** You still haven't told me where you're from,” Tony says, one day.

“I'm from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place,” he offers up.

“Got a family?” Tony asks, out of genuine interest. He wonders who Yinsen used to be. Was he like him?

“Yes, and I will see them when I leave here. And you, Stark?”

He wasn’t, then. 

“No,” Tony replies, not even ashamed. Ty is long gone, he doesn't even know what happened to him and he doesn't want to find out, his parents are dead, Rhodey is always on deployment, Pepper is his  _ assistant _ and Obie runs the company.

“No?” Yinsen looks a hair away from triumphant, as if he had just discovered the one and only flaw in Tony Stark. He wants to laugh, spread his arms like he is demonstrating one of the most powerful weapons in the world and say, ‘just _ one?’  _ “So, you're a man who has everything.. and nothing?”

Tony doesn't reply.

\--

“What are you doing?” Yinsen asks,

Tony opens his eyes, Yinsen is watching him in the glow of the fire. “I’m doing it all again.”

\--

“Don’t waste it, ” and then blood is bubbling from his lips like he imagined it bubbled from his mothers. “Don't waste your life.”

Tony turns around and rain hellfire down on those bastards.

\--

Obie’s betrayed him, the company, everything that has been worked for the last 60 odd years, his father, and America’s flourishing military expenditures. He doesn't particularly care about the last two, but the rest, yeah, kinda.

He’d been doing this for a long time, betraying. Probably since before he took over the company, maybe even before. He wonders if his father knew. He wonders if his father was in on it.

He so _ badly _ wants to do something. But he doesn't. He doesn't. He waits. He makes sure.

And then, when he’s  _ more than _ sure, and the moment is right, he tells Pepper to flip the switch

He feels that energy go through him, knocking him to the side, it lights up the sky for a brief moment. His head is buzzing, his side aches dully, he wonders if he's dead.

He waits a moment, 2, 3. Then he opens his eyes, reveals his fate. The world remains there, remains full and round and contained inside the atmosphere.

He exhales, long and steady, even though there's no air in his lungs. 

\--


	4. Chapter 4

He loves Pepper more than he’s ever loved anyone. Not even DUM-E, or Rhodey, or the freedom of New York City. These are all his loves, sure, but her? She is _ it.  _

He loves her freckles, the cluster of three on her thigh, the way they sprinkle themselves over her nose in the sun. 

He loves how she looks at her desk, legs crossed, head down, scribbling or typing away, busy all the time but never looking it. 

He loves the way she looks when he flirts with her, exasperated and fond of his antics all at once.

He... could actually see himself marrying her, having the 2.5 kids, a white picket fence house in suburbia. The perfect nuclear family.

That's what scares him. He doesn't want them to end up like his mother and his father, he doesn't want his kid to end up like him. He doesn't want the kid to know the word legacy for a long time.

So he becomes destructive, so he makes suit after suit, to protect him and her and make sure there’s never another pair of hands reaching inside his chest again.

He’s driving her away, he knows it. He doesn't even care sometimes.

\--

There’s a missile heading to New York, and suddenly, for the first real time since that cave, he thinks of legacy. The hero who saved New York and sacrificed himself in the process.

So, he does a stupid thing and he does it. For his father. For himself, maybe. Perhaps for the city, who had always given him a home.

Then he’s dead, suddenly. He wonders if it worked. If they will remember him.

Then he’s alive, just as soon.

“Please tell me nobody kissed me,” he says, heart racing. The last time he woke up like this it was in a cave.

\--

When Steve walks into the kitchen it’s 5am, and not even the sun has dared to rise yet.

“Hey,” Tony says lifelessly, startling him.

“Jesus!” he shouts, whirling around. “Tony?” he asks,a moment later.

Tony just unwraps a few fingers form the neck of a vodka bottle to wave.

“What’re ya doin'?” Steve asks, slipping into that Brooklyn voice of his he does sometimes.

“Drinking,” Tony says turning his head so Steve can see the lines of his smile in the moonlight.

“Aren't you an alcoholic?”

“Eh,” eh sighs, “in the morning.”

“It’s more of a 24 hour thing, I think.”

Tony doesn't reply. Steve comes over and sits on the couch opposite him.

They are silent for a long time. Funnily enough, this is the most he has ever connected with Steve. It reminds him of back when he was just a rich bastard, when he used to go home and close his eyes to start the process of life again.

“Legacy,” he whispers, as the morning sun dawns over New York city, making Steve shine even more gold. “My father told me about that idea. Legacy. “ he laughs a little, hollowly. “Now I think he got it from you. Maybe this is all a game of Telephone, and I will pass it on, on, on.”

“Why?” Steve whispers back, ignoring half of his rambling. Tony sits back. The moment is gone. He feels cold, empty, but at the same time he feels the same as he did all those other big moments of his life, showing his father that circuit board, saying yes to MIT, Ty, Rhodey, Obie’s phone call, the fun-vee, the thought of legacy as he soared up into the sky.

He feels like a bruise, big, aching, close to the skin. Maybe he feels thin, about to break. Whatever. He can’t deal with this anymore.

Tony stands up, turning away towards the kitchen. “Well, no one ever forgot your name, remember?” He snatches the vodka from the bench angrily, and steps into the elevator.

\--

Then the accords happen, and even though only hates legal affairs with a passion -- he remembers his less-than-legal exploits with a fondness he probably should not -- it makes sense. He remembers the devastation from New York, from Ultron, from every battle they’ve ever fought. This is right. They can’t have heroes with this amount of power running around.

Then, lying in an abandoned concrete bunker, Tony reconsiders, and perhaps realises he would have liked to add the accomplishment of the Accords onto his name -- the thing that will be inside law books forever. 

Legacy.

It’s fucked him over again.

This time maybe for the last. 


End file.
